Sri Lanka & Thailand Adventure

A free day in Sri Lanka's last royal capital. Stay by the pool and in the gardens, or go down into town to walk around Kandy Lake and visit the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, the island's most revered shrine, where drums sound for the evening puja.

Drive up into the tea country around Nuwara Eliya, where pickers work the bright green slopes, and visit a tea factory to see how the leaf is made and taste the result. After lunch you board the famous hill-country train to Ella, winding past waterfalls and plantations, and check in to a suite at Ella Heritage with a view of Ella Rock.

Walk through the tea bushes this morning to the Nine Arch Bridge and wait for a blue train to cross it high above the valley. After lunch, hike up Little Adam's Peak for a view across the hills and down the Ella Gap, then spend the evening on your balcony.

Leave the cool of the hills this morning for the drive back down to the coast, stopping along the way for a last cup of Ceylon tea. You arrive in Colombo in time for a sunset walk on Galle Face Green, in front of your hotel, on your last evening in Sri Lanka.

Today you cross to Thailand. A driver takes you to the airport for the flight to Bangkok, a little over three hours, where you are met and taken to Praya Palazzo, a restored riverside mansion reached by the hotel's own boat across the Chao Phraya. A Thai welcome dinner is served at the hotel this evening.

A tuk-tuk collects you after breakfast for Bangkok's great temples. Your guide leads you past the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, then a ferry takes you across the river to the porcelain-covered spire of Wat Arun. The rest of the day is for the pool, a massage or the city's rooftop bars.

Fly south to Krabi, where limestone cliffs rise out of the sea, and transfer to the Dusit Thani Krabi Beach Resort on its own quiet stretch of sand. The afternoon is for the beach and the pool as the Andaman Sea shimmers in front of you.

Your own longtail boat and boatman take you out to the islands off Krabi for the day: Koh Poda's white sand, the sandbar at Koh Tup where you can walk between two islands at low tide, snorkelling off Chicken Island and the cliffs of Phra Nang Cave Beach. A picnic lunch is packed for you, and you are back in time for sunset cocktails by the shore.

A car takes you along the coast and over the bridge to Phuket, about three hours, to Bandara Villas on Cape Panwa. For your last three nights your villa has its own pool, separate living space and floor-to-ceiling windows over Ao Yon Bay.

Snorkel and laze on the sand at Coral Island this afternoon, then board a catamaran for a sunset cruise across the Andaman Sea, with a Thai dinner served on deck as the sky turns gold.

Breakfast floats to you this morning on a tray in your private pool. After that the day is unplanned: the beach below the villas, a spa treatment for two, or simply the view.

After a last breakfast, check out and transfer to Phuket Airport for your flight home, with the rock of Sigiriya, the tea hills of Ella and the islands of the Andaman Sea behind you.